GPS World

Tag: From the Editor

  • Out in Front: Independence: A National Value

    Following is a guest editorial by GPS World’s contributing editor for Defense, Don Jewell.

    Advanced low-frequency (LF) signals are back on the air in North America, with live testing of a wide-area precise-timing solution. Initial tests include a comprehensive pallet of signals, including eLoran, that are being evaluated for their ability to provide a robust, wide-area, wireless precise-timing alternative that can operate cooperatively with GPS, or during periods of GPS unavailability.

    The high-power, virtually jam-proof and spoof-proof LF signals operate independently of GPS and GNSS, and provide a Universal Coordinated Time reference, critical to many aspects of U.S. national infrastructure, on the order of tens of nanoseconds.

    Not only is this an independent timing backup, but the LF signals can also be used as pseudoranges mixed with GPS, or if enough transmitters are available, as a fully independent PNT network — in other words, a true backup PNT capability for safety-of-life navigation, for dispatching first responders, and for supporting critical national infrastructures.

    This is an extremely positive development, especially in light of the LightSquared debacle and the now better-understood vulnerabilities of the very low-power GPS signals.

    I hoped I would never have to type that word again, as a noun or a verb, but LightSquared did serve to point out a dire need and shortcoming in the U.S. PNT infrastructure. Fortunately, the proposed eLoran system appears to be on track to fill that need perfectly.

    For the first 32 years that GPS signals were broadcast, Loran-C served as a timing backup and a less accurate but viable navigation alternative. In 2010, the current U.S. administration unplugged Loran-C, against the recommendations of the Department of Transportation’s Positioning and Navigation (PosNav) Committee, the Department of Homeland Security Geospatial Committee, the DOT Undersecretary for Policy, and the DHS Deputy Undersecretary for Preparedness and National Protection.

    Long story short: non-technical people forced ill-advised technical decisions. 

    At that time, Loran-C was 80 percent of the way through a critical metamorphosis into a new digital version known as enhanced Loran or eLoran, with better, more reliable transmitters, smaller receivers, and a virtually jam-proof signal structure. Many likened eLoran to a strong ground-based GPS with coded signals for security. 

    Since then, the government has spent more money dismantling the legacy Loran-C infrastructure than it would have taken to complete the remaining 20 percent upgrade to eLoran. 

    Let’s hope the eLoran demonstrations continue successfully, and that a contract is forthcoming quickly before anyone forgets the LightSquared lessons learned — like we would ever let that happen.

    This is a win/win proposition.

  • Out in Front: The Fire Next Time

    By Alan Cameron

    We have turned back the LightSquared effort to establish a threatening beachhead adjacent to GPS spectrum bands. Having expended many millions, we can now return to our business, secure in having demonstrated both our rights and our rightness.

    No. We cannot afford to do that.

    Radio spectrum is today’s natural resource, vital to current ventures and even more essential to future business and national growth of all kinds. It is far too valuable to be taken for granted, and far too vulnerable to be left protected simply by the Plan A recently executed.

    We will see attempt upon attempt upon attempt to use closely neighboring frequencies in disturbing ways — and, I daresay, to dislodge GNSS from the bands it now holds, by redistributing, re-allocating, and/or redefining spectra.

    Digging in deeper will not answer. It is questionable even now whether the numbers of GPS installed user base or the dollars they represent were sufficient to turn back the LightSquared initiative. It may have been, purely and simply, the Pentagon and the FAA.

    At any rate, the millions of installed GPS users and billions of dollars in industry and infrastructure may soon be dwarfed by billions of potential users and gazillions in economic benefit that broadband or any other spectrum-driven enterprise may muster. The future is wide open, as they say. It moves fast.

    Two courses of action show promise; there may be more.

    • Participate actively, pro-actively, even aggressively — and certainly with no time to waste — in the effort to define receiver standards. The NTIA and PNT EXCOM will devise “standards for the development and procurement of GPS receivers to support their various mission requirements.” NTIA recognized “the importance that receiver standards could play as part of a forward-looking model for spectrum management even beyond the immediate issue of GPS.”

    Get on board, bring productive ideas, work them through the process as efficiently and cooperatively as possible. Then design new products accordingly. Regulatory agencies, national and international, will have little patience with broadened use of other bands, no matter how long high-precision receivers have been doing it. We have been put on notice.

    • Aid, encourage, design products for interoperable GNSS, not to mention modernized GPS, particularly L5. Seek touchpoints with Galileo, GLONASS, and Compass developers, operators, and manufacturers. The broader, more wide-laned the base, the more frequencies that users and equipment can draw on, the more stable will be their operations, and the less vulnerable to encroachment, interference, or downright exclusion.

    Perhaps you have thought of other ways to ensure GNSS viability in a future of increasing demands for spectrum. I would love to hear them, and share them with our readers.

  • Out in Front: When the Gavel Comes Down

    By Alan Cameron

    Perhaps you don’t track suspected criminals in your spare time, nor do you design or supply a GNSS product that does so. Still, the fresh Supreme Court ruling on GPS use for this purpose reverberates for you, in ways yet unknown. The most interesting part of the court’s ruling pops up in a somewhat open-ended “what if” comment concerning future issues that at least one justice thinks the court should address.

    GPS trackers are a form of search, and police must obtain a search warrant to use them, the court unanimously ruled. This comes as a setback to government and police agencies who increasingly rely on GPS surveillance. Justice Scalia said the government’s installation of a GPS device to monitor a vehicle’s movements constitutes a search and violates the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

    Justice Samuel Alito further said the court should address how expectations of privacy affect whether warrants are required for remote surveillance using electronic methods that do not require the police to install equipment, such as GPS tracking of mobile telephones. “If long-term monitoring can be accomplished without committing a technical trespass — suppose for example, that the federal government required or persuaded auto manufacturers to include a GPS tracking device in every car — the court’s theory would provide no protection,” Alito wrote.

    This, or its exact counterpart, has already occurred in cell phones: government-mandated location technology embedded in all devices, over a sliding timescale that comes to maturity, or full application, fairly soon.

    The words “no protection” in Justice Alito’s opinion appear to state that personal cell-phone records are open season to government investigators. Such has already been the case in a number of instances.

    Murkier than government use — if such a concept is conceivable — is commercial use of a consumer’s location data. In other words, privacy. This issue has been raised since GPS-enabled phones were first theorized, and since the very whisper of the first location-based service, but it has never been fully or adequately addressed by anyone in industry or government.The notion of “granting permission” to use one’s location data, in order to benefit from services thus provided, still seems unresolved to me.

    Presumably, we are all waiting around for a test case, such as that of the Jeep owner in the Supreme Court just now. With LBS poised — same as it ever was — on the brink of widespread acceptance, it might benefit everyone if such a case came sooner rather than later.

  • Out in Front: Big Bang Cheery

    By Alan Cameron

    A supersize bunch of pent-up GNSS just bust out all over. GLONASS is fully operational for the first time in more than 15 years. At least one Galileo in-orbit validation satellite broadcasts the new E1 and E5 signals, maybe both satellites by the time you read this. Compass has completed its regional navigation constellation. The first GPS III satellite testbed arrived at its integration and testing site in Colorado. The Russian SBAS is climbing back onto the air again. And QZSS has been quietly making progress, almost unnoticed.

    For the first column since last February, I can write about something besides LightSquared.

    Oops, I did it again.

    But what a breath of sweet, fresh air.

    Maybe now we can get back to the real business of this community: building systems, integrating sensors, exploring applications, and making the world a better place.

    Can’t resist one last note about those creative financiers, now under Securities Exchange Commission investigation, over at LightSquared. A little bird overheard a certain someone say in mid-December, “I was at the FCC on Monday. The discussion was only about what happens after the LS bankruptcy. They are done with LS. This is all about positioning for litigation right now.”

    Of course it’s not all over yet but the kicking and screaming. Companies have powerful lawyers and white houses have long tentacles into federal agencies.

    Be that as it may, I promised to talk about GNSS, the whole GNSS, and nothing but the GNSS.

    We, and by that I mean you, on three continents, are just kicking the milestones over. I’ve never seen a month in which so much progress was made on all fronts: GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Compass, and QZSS. It has been my experience that a step forward for one system is often matched by a step back or at least sideways for another. It is after all a system of systems, and complex systems are by nature fraught with potential for temporary setback.

    Knock on wood, interoperability moved further toward our grasp in the period November 28 to December 16, 2011, than during any other comparable span. We sometimes talk about a coming Golden Age of GNSS. We just witnessed the Golden Growth Spurt.

    A brief note: With this issue, I assume the responsibilities of publisher of this magazine, as well as editor-in-chief. With colleagues Chris Litton (associate publisher, international account manager), the invaluable Tracy Cozzens (managing editor), and Charles Park (art director), we are collectively worth slightly south of three digits of GNSS experience. Count on us to keep a steady stream of business and technical news coming your way, and to keep this forum open for your views and opinons.

    Got something to say?

    Tell me about it.

  • Out in Front: Feds Playing Footsie

    I’ll be the first to say that I don’t know how Washington works.

    I don’t know if Washington works, but that’s another story.

    Lacking that knowledge, and a competent lawyer to pepper my filings with the requisite “Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820 (D.C. Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 977 (1972) . . . claims of nonsegregability must be made with the same degree of detail” language, all my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for agency communications to the National Telecommunications Administration (NTIA) failed. My FOIA won-lost record stands at 0–7.

    The reason cited by the Department of Transportation for withholding 11 documents and blacking out in their entirety the two pages that it thoughtfully provided was that being any more forthcoming might “cause harm to the government’s deliberative process.” If government told the people what it was up to behind closed doors, the people might object. Shades of Tammany Hall. “I’ll decide what is in the best interest of the electorate.”

    Several government agencies, responding to a tasking by the National PNT Executive Committee, sent their thoughts on LightSquared and GPS to the NTIA, which shares responsibility for spectrum with the Federal Communications Commission. At last notice, the NTIA had not forwarded these communiques to the FCC, and it sure does not want to share them with anyone on the outside. The NTIA was first to rebuff my FOIA, followed by others. Only Interior and NASA provided substance, but in both cases the documents had already been released by a House committee.

    The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) knows the system a lot better than I do. Its well (or at least copiously) worded FOIA to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for documents related to LightSquared elicited several boxloads of same.

    A nonprofit organization, CREW uses research, media outreach, and litigation to force officials to act ethically and lawfully, and to bring unethical conduct to public attention.

    CREW is combing through the voluminous documents, as you may now also do. So far, I’ve seen effusive emails from White House staffers to corporate folks they may or may not already know, fawning all over themselves about economic benefits and job creation that a new generation of wireless technology might bring.

    Not a word yet about downside or job loss that undermining an infrastructure cornerstone will produce. In an election year, point to new or hypothetical blooms and hide the detritus.

    This just in: LightSquared formally notified the FCC that any determination must not be based on “the subjective views of the federal agencies involved.”

    Now I wonder what kind of thrall the company thinks it holds the FCC in, to instruct it so?

  • Out in Front: Catch a Wave

    Expecting guidance from FCC regulators by year’s end? LightSquared purports to do so, but a more measured evaluation finds a December decision unlikely.

    The current test cycle — hopefully not the final one — just reached its end on November 4 at White Sands Missile Range, under the Air Force’s watchful eye. That testing focused only on “cellular and personal/general navigation” receivers as specified in a September letter from the National Telecommunication and Information Agency. According to unconfirmed reports, this round of testing did not include the JAVAD GNSS precision receiver with a new filter prototype, although LightSquared lobbied strongly to have the potentially bacon-rescuing device included.

    Even if allowed, that move would have been highly premature, and ultimately misguided and misguiding. The 33 other high-precision and network GPS receivers that underwent May testing would all have to be retested, with the new filter incorporated somehow in each one, before any meaningful conclusion about technical feasibility could be drawn. Then retrofit cost issues would have to be addressed. Months of work remain before any fair and complete evaluation can occur.

    A National PNT Engineering Forum summary of the cellular and personal/general navigation testing at White Sands is expected by November 30. A complete report may not appear until December. An FCC decision that same month, or the next, or the next, would be speedy and premature beyond any precedent that even the trigger-happy commission has yet set for itself.

    As a basis for a decision on the waiver, the cellular and personal nav testing is still insufficient. At least one, probably two more rounds of testing — at bare minimum — involving the recent proposed filter fixes and a complete range of high-precision receivers should take place before putting national security, infrastructure, hundreds of thousands of jobs, and hundreds of billions of dollars of public and private-sector investments at risk.

    This doesn’t mean everyone not directly involved in testing can chill.

    This is a political and very high-stakes financial struggle, not just a series of complex technical issues. Decisions when they are made will reflect political  considerations and financial motives as well as technical test results.

    Everyone who cares about the outcome should sit down today and write letters or e-mails to their three congresspeople — two senators and one representative — stating strongly and clearly their views and reasons. Even if you have written before. Congress is the only place currently that any form of leverage can be exerted.

    We are riding a wave of change, and precariously at that. While keeping our balance, we must continually gauge the water, the wind, our own stamina — and warily watch the great white sharks that are circling.

  • Out in Front: C’mon, People Now

    In this hour of crisis, in this hour of need, I would recall for you the immortal words of the Brotherhood of Man, as reprised here by their disciples, Sonny and Cher:

    For united we stand,
    Divided we fall,
    And if our backs should
    ever be against the wall,
    We’ll be together,
    Together, you and I.

    Or will we?

    The LightSquared crisis has been and continues to be the most perplexing and fascinating episode I have followed in 11 years of covering the GNSS community. Fascinating because it has so many political and societal implications, as well as tangled-up technical, application, and business issues. In the end, it’s all about money. Money and power.

    It further fascinates me from a sociological point of view. The way the unfolding of this process has affected the GNSS community, in particular the subset of that community that is the GPS industry in the United States, strikes many reverberating chords.

    At first glance, we can say that the crisis has pulled a diverse community together, united it against a common foe. Witness the work of the Coalition, the agreement among the TWG sub-groups, the NPEF, the chorus of supporting letters and comments in the FCC docket, and so on. This is true — but only to an extent.

    I believe the opposite is also true: it has exposed cracks or fissures within the community, driven wedges into those cracks, and widened the cracks into gaps. It has exploited natural divisions that exist because GNSS technology is so widespread in applications and variegated in types of users. The process threatens to fracture the industry, and the community, further. That’s alarming.

    In the early going, response was fairly uniform: how can LightSquared and the FCC do this? How can we stop them? Thus the Coalition to Save Our GPS was formed. The Coalition has functioned very ably, but in fact it represents only one segment of the community: the high-precision segment. It is staffed and directed, to my knowledge, largely by Trimble and John Deere with some help and assistance from the off-shore and aviation segments. There is participation and membership from other areas, but generally, high precision drives it.

    This is also largely true of the GPS Industry Council. I am making broad generalizations that are surely inaccurate, to a degree. The GPS Industry Council earlier served the community in the pre-LightSquared negotiations of 2002 and continues to do so today alongside the Coalition It is similarly oriented towards the interests of its principal members.

    The high-precision bias, if you will, of the scenario became apparent to me when I tried to recruit webinar speakers and contributed editorial pieces from the other end of the GPS community: consumer and handheld receiver and cell-phone chip manufacturers. These companies, among whom I number Qualcomm (which long ago snapped up SnapTrack), Broadcom (acquired Global Locate a few years ago), and CSR (now owns the company formerly known as SiRF), declined to participate, speak out, or become involved in any public way. They seemed content to stand on the sidelines, watching. A newly appointed Qualcomm board member of the PNT Excomm Advisory Committee recused himself from participation in LightSquared-related activities.

    Why? Money. These companies are much closer to, in many cases are business partners with, the wireless carriers and the cell-phone manufacturers who have stock in seeing 4G happen and broadband roll out across the land. The L1 GPS companies feel they have to be fairly careful about how they proceed.

    As one person from such a company told me, “I think we tend to have a positive view, which is contrary to everyone else. This was a political issue, not a technical one, and the political wheels were in motion for a long time. Now, it’s up to us to decide how to deal with it. Whine and cry that we were cheated and duped, or seize the day and do what we are good at: engineer our way out.

    “It’s interesting how much this industry likes staring at its own navel, rather than looking (or listening) to other points of view. It is what I call ‘violent agreement’.”

    No matter how violently you may disagree with this view, it is vital that you be aware that it exists within the same group that you are part of.

    So we have the beginnings of a split, of something that could become a gulf, between the high-precision and the consumer segments of the industry.

    On the second hand, we have the military, many of whom — now these are the oldtimers — are secretly pleased by the travail the industry and civil users are going through. Because they never really liked sharing GPS with the civils anyway. However shortsighted, impractical, and shoot-yourself-in-the-foot this attitude may seem, it also exists, and is held by powerful, influential people.

    Third, some people within and without the GNSS community accept some or all of the LightSquared claims: that there’s no problem, or if there is a problem then filters can solve it, that alternative solutions are ready-to-hand or can be found through diligence. You may disagree, violently or non-violently, with these believers; you must still take them into serious account.

    Finally, JAVAD GNSS has announced a partnership with LightSquared and declared that “LightSquared not only can coexist with GPS, it complements it.” The company has always set an independent course, but this breaks new ground.

    What to do?

    My colleague Eric Gakstatter perceived the need for a more broad-based organization, an all-inclusive industry and users association, which the GPS Industry Council patently is not, however earnestly it has tried to serve that purpose in the absence of anyone else to do so.

    Almost simultaneously, Glen Gibbons wrote a column in his magazine proposing just such an association. “The need for more effective, continuing organization and representation of the GNSS community — manufacturers, service providers, and users — seems clear. . . . Common interests abound, and I’m not just referring to the RF issues that fuel the present furor,” he stated.

    We have an assortment of forums already: the Civil Global Positioning System Service Interface Committee, industry councils in the United States, Europe, and Japan, the Institute of Navigation. But these bodies cannot represent nor accomplish — it is not in their respective charters to do so — all that must be represented and accomplished.

    Building and maintaining a new entity will not be easy, because the GNSS community is more diverse, and I venture to say more divided, than we may like to admit. A consensus-driven organization of divergent interests is a very ornery thing; just ask the European Union about its efforts to mount Galileo.

    A coalition of like-minded folks united around one issue differs greatly from a broad organization assembling diverse points of view. The GPS community may never speak with one voice, even in the matter of its own survival. But other courses of action lie open to us.

    Test Till You Drop. The new phase of Lower 10 testing extends into November. After that, the JAVAD filter technology must be widely distributed, as soon as it is available, to all interested parties and rigorously tested to determine its validity and, equally important, its extrapolability to other proprietary receiver technologies well established in the field. I dare say there are many further aspects that must be thoroughly investigated and analyzed before anybody asserts that “We’re not [doing] anything that creates problems for GPS safety and service.” Because Julius Genachowski said we can’t.

    Long after the unfounded claims and the tortured analogies have lapsed into dust, the laws of electromagnetic
    behavior will go on working, as they have always done. And very admirably at that.

    C’mon, people now,
    Call on your physics.
    Everybody get together,
    Try to use your analytics,
    Right now.

  • Out in Front: The Good, the Bad, the Incompetent

    Good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-WThe most efficient use of spectrum the world has ever seen benefits more than a billion people today. Two billion tomorrow, when modernized and interoperable GNSS gets real. This massive installed base constitutes a source of innovative advantage and invaluable good will for the United States.The latter arises from the high degree of trust and confidence in the United States and its stewardship of GPS, one of the most successful — and perhaps only — simultaneous foreign aid and domestic economic stimulus programs ever created.

    Smooth dealers operating inside a hedge, playing with other people’s money, want to make billions by raiding this national resource to provide video on cell phones to young audiences.

    The Federal Communications Commission has acted in ways inconsistent with reasonable public expectations of a federal rule-making agency. Early on, it gave the appearance of buying into the LightSquared agenda, issuing a ruling with undue speed.

    It has waived, explained, and proclaimed in ways that show an abject ignorance of radio frequency (there are conflicting reports as to whether agency technical staff was ever consulted by leadership prior to acceding to the LightSquared request) — and too clever by half. The chairman, rumored to be in line for the China ambassadorship, was careful not to sign the waiver himself, but have the deed done by a subordinate.

    In this act, they ignored the inherent conflict in two competing national policy objectives: the National Space Policy and the Broadband Memorandum. Rather than taking time to reconcile crucial guiding principles, the waiver plots its own course.

    The ruckus has gotten the president out on a limb, and now the agency must find a solution allowing him to crawl back before the election. Either that, or he and his advisors, including the FCC chair, will knuckle down and carry on regardless, saving political face in the short run while weakening national infrastructure and defensive capabilities.

    Never underestimate politicians’ desire to save face. In many ways, it’s all they’ve got.

    The best thing the GPS community can do during this quiet reloading period is to keep the letters and calls flowing to Congress: the safest and most fact-based action for the FCC is to conclude that the terms of the LightSquared conditional waiver have not been met and withdraw the license to deploy a terrestrial network in the 1525–1559 MHz band. This is the only approach fully consistent with both the National Space Policy and the Broadband Memorandum, as well as the FCC’s own regulations.

    At this point, any actions taken by the FCC are subject to unpredictable political considerations.

    Shootout at the cantina.

  • Out in Front: A Pawn in Their Game

    Maybe we got played. But we put up a good fight. We really had no option to do anything but fight. So we did, and we’re still fighting the LightSquared attack on the GPS signal. It’s not over yet, not by a long shot.

    Suspicions now creep in that the attack may have been a feint, that the company never really intended to do what it threatened: broadcast a very powerful signal from ground towers, on a frequency immediately adjacent to the GPS signal. LightSquared had its eye on another prize instead.

    Here’s what I have heard, independently from two people who follow the telecommunications industry for a living. Party number one:

    “These guys have b..ls.

    Off the record, their business plan is a 100 percent swap.

    So the more GPS gets irritated by their b..ls..t and says get out of the L-band, the more LS like it.

    Tell your friends to recommend that LS use their other [lower] spectrum.

    Now that’s what they don’t want.

    The trade is 40 MHz of new terrestrial spectrum.”

    Party number two, a Wall Street contact, said the same, implying a direct interaction with top-level LightSquared personnel as its source.

    Somewhere in the very early going, back in December of last year, I read a similar speculation, but gave it little credence because it seemed too good to be true. I’m still wary.

    But such deceit seems consistent with the sly and manipulative behavior that LightSquared has evidenced to date, on top of the near-total lack of any engineering or scientific case for its power play on spectrum. Time and again, company spokespersons made their case on legalistic and rule-making grounds, abetted by no less a person than the FCC chair. Any technical language or justification they used was transparently, almost laughably, unfounded.

    That’s the way government works, unfortunately. The laws of man are held above the laws of physics — even when it comes to rewriting the previous laws of man, which, it turns out, had some logic. The MSS spectrum, about which all this furor has raged, turns out to stand for Mobile Satellite Service spectrum. If the LightSquared signal were held to its license, it would broadcast from satellites, with a small provision for ancillary ground broadcast.

    Even with the Technical Working Group’s strong repudiation of both the LightSquared proposal and the FCC’s conditional waiver, and the stern-jawed joint letter from the Departments of Defense and Transportation, we are far from safe. I have seen too many government boards — local, state, and federal — fly in the face of evidence, to believe that facts rule.

    It ain’t over till the statuesque lady sings.

  • Out in Front: The Daughter of Time

    “Truth,” wrote Sir Francis Bacon, “is the daughter of time.”

    He meant that any account, repeated often enough by different people in different places, at different junctures, eventually becomes accepted as historical fact, or truth, by those with no direct knowledge of the matter.

    That’s why it is so important to repudiate and expose lies at every encounter. Never, ever let one pass. Even when it’s the same one that you dispelled yesterday — or thought you had taken care of. One thing about liars, they keep coming back. They don’t give up.

    Would you give up, if you had $20 billion at stake?

    I wrote an online column on this topic recently: “LightSquared, FCC Rebuttals Distort Record.” These distortions were so blandly crafted that they were picked up and passed on by a number of other parties who should have known better, including at least one colleague of the press who writes for a wireless industry publication.

    Come to think of it, you do have $20 billion at stake — and much more. We all do. To the tune of more than $67.6 billion in direct economic benefits in the United States alone, provided by GPS. Or $96 billion per year in direct economic costs should GPS be disrupted. See the System news in this issue, “The Economics of Disruption,” for what you stand to lose.

    If you think the recent amendment to the 2012 Budget, cutting off FCC funds in this matter, should settle LightSquared hash, think again. The company is back with a new solution. Same as the old solution. Just with the pieces moved around. And it has taken its game up a notch, signaling intent to apply to the International Telecommunication Union for authority to broadcast powerful terrestrial signals all over the world.

    All over the world. Calculate the costs of that. For our international readers, this may mean trouble for GLONASS and Galileo too.

    Written to your congresspeople about this? Bravo if you have. Write again. They are not tired of hearing from you. There’s a lot they don’t know, that you do, particularly if you read the news accounts here and online. Forward links freely; they are information-laden and they are there for you to use.

    Not written to anyone yet? The headline of this column also served as the title of a novel by Josephine Tey, concerning Richard III, King of England. You know the evil hunchback murderer of Shakespeare’s play? We recall him as such because someone (his rival Henry VII) was particularly adept at lying and getting others, including Shakespeare, to repeat the lie — with none to dispute.

    GPS could become a forgotten hunchback of history. Act now.

  • Out in Front: Business Hand at the Helm

    I met Chris Litton (right) at my first European Navigation Conference in Sevilla, Spain, May 2001. I recall a long conversation over a dinner of Moorish and Andalusian dishes, attended by the staffs of NavCom Technology and GPS World, in the Mesón Don Raimundo.

    Over the years we met again and again at conferences hither and yon. “Great cities of the world!” became our greeting. As sales manager for NavCom, then for the NavCom division of John Deere & Co., from 1995 to 2007, Chris saw many more of those cities than I did. A GPS road warrior.

    I’m very happy to announce that we now play on the same team — to your ultimate benefit. Meet J. Christopher Litton, international account executive and ad manager for GPS World magazine, website, e-newsletters, webinars, and the whole enterprise.

    Add to his decade-plus at Navcom the subsequent years, up to present date, doing similar things for Septentrio Satellite Navigation, earlier experience as co-founder of Litton Consulting Group, where he helped establish NavCom, and deep background as U.S. Navy gunner’s mate missile system specialist.

    As a result, your business partner here knows more about GNSS markets and technology than the editor. That not only distinguishes us from the crowd — it’s got to be worth something. To you.

    For the 6.7 percent of our subscribers who are actual or potential advertising decision-makers, this is worth a great deal. Give him a ring or shoot him an e-mail query about reaching your business development goals. He’ll have something concrete, knowledgeable, and effective to suggest. He can implement your message, simultaneously and synergistically, across many platforms: print, electronic, social media, exhibits, and more. He’ll visit you for an in-depth skull session. A GNSS road warrior, traveling to all cities of the world, great and small.

    The balance of 93.3 percent — or really, all our readers — will benefit from Chris’ knowledge and marketplace vision, helping me shape and steer this vast starship across the far reaches of positioning, navigation, and timing.

  • Out in Front: Blinded by the Light

    To illustrate the fix we’re in, Logan Scott offered this analogy for out-of-band interference during the April webinar, “LightSquared and GPS: Our Story So Far.” We’re driving at night and come upon a bicylist with one of those little flashing lights. That’s the GPS signal. So far, so safe. We know the bicyclist’s position.

    Then around the bend comes a truck with its headlights on high-beam, in the adjacent lane, but brights set at our eye level. That’s the LightSquared signal.

    Where’s the bicyclist? Uh oh.

    That is not the only light off which we are fending. Some of it we generated ourselves — with help from neighbors and children and friends and employers and, well, just about anyone with a 
mobile online connection.

    Every time you:

    • download a map and driving directions to your cell phone or wireless-connected PND;
    • stream a movie to your cell phone (all right, so only youngersomethings of your acquaintance actually do this. They still have the eyesight for it);
    • while on the road, tap wirelessly into your company’s complex database of whatever kind that has been moved to “the cloud” in a cost-saving and efficiency-ramping measure;
    • download a Zen meditatation app to your mobile, one with scientifically designed binaural rhythms using embedded beats to induce a trance-like state through brainwave entrainment for ultimate relaxation, stress reduction, pain management, improved sleep quality, super learning, enhanced creativity, out-of-body experience, and lucid dreaming (I kid you not); or
    • get sports updates and video highlights direct to your phone —

    Every time you do any one of these or myriad other activities on your handy pocket communications device, you, sir or madam, are contibuting to the problem that the GNSS community now struggles with.

    Society has developed a ravenous appetite for huge volumes of virtual data, and we are not at all content to wait until getting home or to the office for a wired connection to access it. We want it now! On the road or sidewalk, in the coffeeshop, in the mall, in the stadium, along the running path, yea, even unto in the wilderness.

    This appetite will only grow. LightSquared — mark my words, it will have plenty of company following — wants wider bandwidth to help you access online data faster. Sooner than you can say “traffic congestion,” even more data will be on offer, with even greater demand for wider bandwidth.

    As one webinar attendee e-mailed (he wrote in all caps to emphasize his feelings, but they are downsized here),
    “Do y’all think this has anything to do with the fact that mobile phone companies can make significantly more money streaming TV to cell phones than with GPS applications?”

    Technology is never a single-edged sword.